Enneagram of Personality and Enneatypes: What are they?

Between the areas covered by psychology, for decades the study of Personality types it arouses great interest and media coverage.

This is partly why, inside and outside this science, many proposals for the classification of personality types have appeared today, well known. Among them is the Enneagram of Personality and Its Classification by Enneatypes.

What is the Enneagram of Personality?

The enneagram of personality is difficult to define in one sentence, because it has many facets. That is why the explanation of what it is will emerge throughout this article.

Its clearest and easiest facet to address from the beginning is the following: the enneagram is a circle with nine lines. East:

In fact, the term enneagram refers to this nine-pointed geometric and circular figure in which the enneatypes are represented.

This figure embodies the second easiest to understand facet of what the enneagram is. The enneagram is, in practice, a personality classification system. As such, raises some categories that theoretically can be used to explain trends and propensities

that define the habitual behavior of the people.

These categories with which it is tried to classify the different types of personality by means of the enneagram are the ennaeatypes, which are numbered from 1 to 9. Thus, each person could be defined by an enneatype, which would collect the characteristics in which the person stands out the most.

The eneatypes

• Enneatype 1: perfectionism. It is a category that applies to people who are especially demanding with what they do and who struggle to get closer to an ideal version of themselves.

• Enneatype 2: tendency to help. This piece of the enneagram describes people focused on helping others and who underestimate their own needs.

• Enneatype 3: the pursuit of personal success. It applies to people with a tendency to narcissism who constantly seek to give a good image in front of others. They like to show off and make their aesthetic speak in their favor to cover their insecurities.

• Enneatype 4: artistic sensibility. These are people who see themselves as part of a very special story, and their way of perceiving things tend to be imbued with a strong emotional charge that makes them tragic and melancholic. In addition, they are individualistic and like to think of themselves as unique people differentiated from the rest.

• Enneatype 5: investigative spirit. It describes very rational and dispassionate people, with a great interest in objectively understanding the reality that surrounds them. They don't usually talk a lot about themselves or their emotions.

• Enneatype 6: attachment to the rules and tendency to distrust. What characterizes this enneatype is the propensity to abide by the rules and to question all the logic of action that comes out of them. If they are separated from these norms, they are very insecure and fall into constant doubt.

• Enneatype 7: tendency to enthusiasm and outbursts. The people described by this enneatype are in a constant search for pleasure, which causes them to abandon their long-term plans with some frequency. They are usually in a good mood and reject the possibility of compromising so as not to have to regret losses.

• Enneatype 8: attachment for the feeling of justice. It describes people who like to be in control of the situation and who go to great lengths to make the wrongdoer pay the consequences. They tend to be self-confident and trust their judgment, which puts them in a position to offer protection to others.

• Enneatype 9: a peacemaker and mediator spirit. People who excel in this regard tend to flee from conflict and generally show a passive attitude. They prefer to focus their actions on consensus and avoid being shrill in their behavior. In addition, they leave important decisions to others.

Displacements within the enneagram

According to the logic that is usually attributed to the operation of the enneagram, each person can be explained by the type that best fits them. However, if certain atypical circumstances arose, the context could cause the person to start acting in a different way. similar to how a person defined by another enneatype would do, that is, her personality would experience a displacement.

The directions in which one might travel from the starting point of his enneatype are explained in the circle with lines, in which the 9 enneagram types of the personality. Thus, enneatype 1 (perfectionist) could shift to position 4 (artist) or 7 (the enthusiast), and each of these other enneatypes, in turn, may shift to two others as well. These lines would also serve to indicate the possible routes of personal development that each person can undertake depending on the enneatype from which they start.

Why the enneagram is not a personality test

What we have so far, as explained, is a personality classification system and a proposal about how transitions from one personality type to another are made. This, in the absence of knowing if there is research that supports the usefulness and robustness of this method of classification, and without knowing how the scores of each person in each enneatype could be measured, it does not seem wild. But there is a reason the enneagram cannot be considered a personality test: relies on pseudoscientific ideas.

Although the enneagram accounts for different types of personality, it is neither a personality test nor, in its globality, a tool that can be used by psychology if certain guarantees of effectiveness. The reason is that it is not a simple classification system of psychological characteristics but that it goes much further, because is based on a belief system based on esotericism and magical thinking.

This means, among other things, that the enneagram of personality and the formulation of enneatypes not only rest on presuppositions about the functioning of mental processes, but also start from a supernatural vision of what exists and is part of the reality.

Thus, for example, it is said that the enneagram can serve to explain our personality, but also to discover the basic mistakes we make in our lives and how we can grow spiritually. This is something very relevant: among the reasons for being of the enneagram is that of being an instrument for the spiritual development of the person, serving to identify the essential problems that affect us daily... and all this, without having to give detailed information about what things affect us, in what context we live, with whom we interact, etc.

Playing with ambiguities

The reason these powers are attributed to the use of the enneagram is that it supposedly reflects the way in which invisible cosmic forces structure the functioning of reality and, of course, of us themselves. That is the utility of the enneagram is excused under a layer of metaphysics explained on the basis of inaccuracies.

The enneatypes represent these cosmic forces that govern the functioning of the universe, and to demonstrate this, appeal is made to the mathematical curiosities that appear when playing with the numbers represented in the diagram of relations between enotypes that represents the enneagram. For example, if we divide the number 1 by 7 (the magic number) the result will be 0.142857142857, that is that is, the sequence of numbers that is reflected in the figure starting from enneatype 1 and ending in the 7.

These "magic" properties of numbers are universal (they hold in any situation), and the enneagram finds in these numbers a way to connect with the essential, which goes beyond the context and can only be explained in a very abstract and confusing way.

Conclusions

Like the ancient Pythagoreans, Advocates of the enneagram turn to numerology to try and make links between the mystical nature between numbers, people, and the environment in which they live, exposing mathematical curiosities and taking for granted the existence of supernatural connections between the structure of the human mind and the functioning of the cosmos.

As a tool, the enneagram is not scientifically useful because it is not designed to be put to the test and make it possible to detect faults in its operation. All it offers are vague explanations that could describe just about anyone. Therefore, your personality type classification system is arbitrary, although that does not mean that satisfaction can be found in seeing oneself through the descriptions of oneself that offers.

Neither the enneagram was born with the purpose of generating scientifically valid knowledge, nor its method of application has to do with the principles that govern the psychology as science. However, among the supposed virtues of this tool is the possibility of offering solutions to major vital problems from a system applicable to all people, regardless of their context. After all, we are all supposed to be subject to the same cosmic forces.

Bibliographic references:

• Gurdjieff, G. I. The Enneagram

• Palmer, H. (2014). The Enneagram. Barcelona: The March Hare.

• The Essential Enneagram